We have completed, well almost, week 3 of TOG Year 1.  Rather, than focus on Egyptian gods, we focused on the 10 plagues and passover.  I assigned both of my bigger kids to make a book about the 10 plagues.  My daughter chose to make a fan book.



It's a little difficult to see, but you can get the basic idea.  I was happy with the effort she put into it.  I think she really learned the material. 

I'm not super pleased with the way the fan book covers up some of the writing.  We used the octagon shaped fan book (fat) available FREE from homeschool share.  I did have the foresight to have her use the reverse orientation on the last 5 pages, but I think maybe I should draw a line to mark the end of the readable space. It may just be too many pages for a fan book.  Probably a layered flip book would have been a better choice.

My son's book is still not finished.  He is drawing much more elaborate pictures and he paraphrased a lot more of the biblical account for the text of his book.  It will be very nice, I just need to encourage him to finish it TODAY.

We completed our lapbooks for our study of Heat and Energy last week.  This was the first lapbook that really made sense to me.  I have liked the idea of lapbooking since I heard of it about a year ago, but most of the ones we have done seemed somewhat awkward to me.  I guess I'm not really a unit study person.  I can't wrap my brain around a true unit study.  Most of the pre-made lapbooks have seemed to me (and my kids) that we were learning things to make the lapbook.  Unfortunately, that is a general tendency that I have seen in myself as a teacher (and a person for that matter.) I struggle with doing things just to get them done. 

Anyway, I digress.  For our Heat and Energy lapbooks we used God's Design for the Physical World - Heat and Energy published by Answers in Genesis, as our "spine".  We read the lesson, did the accompanying activity, and made a minit book corresponding to the lesson.  (Sometimes making the book was the activity.) This method finally made sense to me.  Making the minit books was reinforcing what we were already learning.  Looking at our completed lapbooks now and in the future will serve as a good review of our study. The kids enjoyed making the books (for the most part.)

Here are the titles of the minit books.

1. What is Energy?
2. Types of Energy
3. Law of Charges
4. What is  Temperature?
5. Circuits
6. Celsius and Fahrenheit Thermometers
7. Convex vs. Concave
8. What is Conduction? Convection? Radiation?
9. What is Static Electricity?
10. Conductors and Insulators
11. Sound
12. The Electromagnetic Spectrum
13. Wave Diagram

 Here are some pictures from my son's lapbook.  He took the pictures himself so they're a little bit blurry. 

We completed the WWI lapbook from Hands of a Child on Friday.  I appreciated having their resource guide.  I basically used their guide to teach the material.  We listened to Story of the World, watched Sergeant York, and read a few supplementary books as well.  This was the first HOAC lapbook that we have completed. We did not do all of the books that were included.  The resource guide was well organized and easy to find the answers for the minit books. Some of the instructions for the books were a little confusing.  There were a couple we never did figure out.  It was worth the price to me to have this done for me because I knew nothing about WWI. The kids still much prefer making their own lapbooks though.

These pictures are of my ds's lapbook.  My dd made one too, but they're pretty much the same.  I especially like the cover of ds's lapbook.  He drew the picture of Snoopy as the WWI Flying Ace and then scanned it and painted it on the computer.  Also, we've started pasting our minibooks into folders that are not shutterfolded.  Then we 3-hole punch the folder and store it in the appropriate notebook.

If anyone is interested in seeing more pictures I'll take more. 

Here are the pictures of my ds lapbook on inventors.  He's 9-1/2 years old.  My daughter made one too, but they're similar so I'm not posting pictures of hers.

There are some great Christmas lapbook ideas so I've decided to collect some of the ones that I like here. 

The Night Before Christmas

The Christmas Day Kitten from Homeschool Share

Christmas Unit Studies at Homeschool Share

 Christmas Symbols Unit Study from Happy Homeschool

Names of Jesus Unit Study from Happy Homeschool

Good Christian Men Rejoice (Carol Unit Study) from Happy Homeschool

Christmas Symbol Unit Study from athomeschool.com

Here are the resources that we used for our Civil War study.

Across Five Aprils - This was a read-aloud.  It provided a good overview of the war from a child's perspective.  It gave some detail about various battles (as much as we wanted truthfully), and insight into many of the issues.

The Everything Civil War Book - I used this mainly to familiarize myself with the Civil War.  There was a nice timeline in the back that I used to make the kids' timelines in their lapbooks. I wrote the event and had them copy it onto cardstock.  That's what the LONG white inserts are in the lapbooks.

Abraham Lincoln - Read-aloud

If You Grew Up With Abraham Lincoln - Independent reading

Who Was Harriet Tubman? - Independent reading

Meet Addy-An American Girl - Independent reading

The Drinking Gourd - Independent reading

Pink and Say - I read this book aloud.  It is very touching.  I got choked up several times.

Civil War Days - This is a book of projects.  We didn't do as many of them as the kids would have liked. We especially liked baking "Shortnin' Bread".  It was delicious.

A Picture Book of Robert E. Lee - This was a good read-aloud.  It had good information about Robert E. Lee.

Ulysses S. Grant - 18th President - I read this aloud too.  It included U.S. Grant's life, not just his presidency.

My Brother's Keeper - Independent reading

I also found these websites helpful.

Homeschool in the Woods - This is a free Civil War Unit Study

The History Place - A great Civil War timeline

WOWIO - has Great Civil War Projects You Can Build Yourself for free to download.

Differences between the North and South Minibook

Compromise Minibook

We included a copy of the Gettysburg address pasted inside a modified envelope book.  Basically it was folded twice in the envelope fold, like the old "cootie catchers"

The clip art of Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Grant, and Robert E. Lee was from free historical clip art that I downloaded from somewhere, but can't figure it out.

Here are our Civil War lapbook pictures.  The first set is my 9-1/2 year old son's.  The second set is my 7-1/2 year old daughter.